In an increasingly networked public, the Internet and social media provide
rich opportunities for reconnecting youth with their civic life. In a
questionnaire study of 578 14-20 year old youth, we explore the relationship
between Internet technology experiences, civic efficacy, community
identification, and civic engagement in their everyday lives.
Contrary to prevailing stereotypes of digital youth, we found that most rely on
email and text messaging to communicate with others in their local communities
about civic issues. Further, those more experienced with technologies in the
public sphere (such as blogs, wikis, and Twitter) had higher levels of civic
engagement. Teens who strongly identified with their local community and who had
higher levels of civic efficacy were especially likely to be civically engaged.
These results highlight the importance of encouraging youth to emotionally
connect to their local communities, and to do so online in the public sphere
rather than through more personal communication channels.

},
author = {Shelly D. Farnham and David Keyes and Vicky Yuki and Chris Tugwell},
note = {Nominated for best paper.},
publisher = {AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media},
title = {Modeling Youth Civic Engagement in a New World of Networked Publics},
url = {http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=201621},
year = {2013},
}